25 years of surveillance of drug-resistant tuberculosis: achievements, challenges, and way forward

Abstract

Tuberculosis is second only to COVID-19 as a cause of death from a single infectious agent. In 2020, almost 10 million people were estimated to have developed tuberculosis and it caused 1·5 million deaths. Around a quarter of deaths caused by antimicrobial resistance are due to rifampicin-resistant tuberculosis. Antimicrobial resistance surveillance systems for many bacterial pathogens are still in the early stages of implementation in many countries, and do not yet allow for the estimation of disease burden at the national level. In this Personal View, we present the achievements, challenges, and way forward for the oldest and largest global antimicrobial resistance surveillance system. Hosted by WHO since 1994, the Global Project on Anti-Tuberculosis Drug Resistance Surveillance has served as a platform for the evaluation of the trends in anti-tuberculosis drug resistance for over 25 years at country, regional, and global levels. With an estimated 465 000 incident cases of multidrug-resistant and rifampicin-resistant tuberculosis in 2019, drug-resistant tuberculosis remains a public health crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic has reversed years of progress in providing essential tuberculosis services and reducing disease burden. The number of people diagnosed with drug-resistant tuberculosis has dropped by 22% since before the pandemic, and the number of patients provided with treatment for drug-resistant tuberculosis has dropped by 15%. Now more than ever, closing gaps in the detection of drug-resistant tuberculosis requires investment in research and development of new diagnostic tools and their rollout, expansion of sample transport systems, and the implementation of data connectivity solutions.

Figure 1

WHO member states with high-quality data on rifampicin resistance among new bacteriologically confirmed pulmonary tuberculosis cases from routine continuous surveillance systems Data are for 2019 (A) and 2014 (B).

Figure 2

Percentage of bacteriologically confirmed pulmonary tuberculosis cases tested for rifampicin resistance, globally and for WHO regions, 2009–19 Reproduced from WHO's Global TB Report 2020.